‘Tracy Zille’ on Twitter: Man to appear in Louis Trichardt Equality Court

LIMPOPO – The South Africa Human Rights Commission and Anthony Matumba will meet in the Louis Trichardt Equality Court today (July 27) for a hearing that relates to the now deleted Twitter account of ‘Tracy Zille’.

According to a statement by Limpopo provincial HRC office manager Victor Mavhidula, the Twitter account was run by Matumba, a local councillor from the Makhado Local Municipality.

“In July 2020 the SAHRC received a complaint from a member of the public relating to the social media account known as ‘Tracy Zille’. It appeared from the account that a white woman was making disparaging, racist and harassing comments towards black women in particular,” their statement reads.

Review contacted Matumba in July last year after Atlantic Council‘s Digital Forensic Research Lab published evidence supposedly linking him to the account.

Earlier this week, #TracyZille was propelled to the top of SA's trending lists by her controversially racist tweets.

My investigation for @DFRLab tracked down the man making money from the account: a government official and EFF councillor from Makhado.https://t.co/pDypDJiB3I

— Ad Homonym (@jean_leroux) July 10, 2020

Matumba at the time denied claims that he was the person behind the account and added that these allegations were based on a link that was shared by the Twitter profile that leads to a website that he runs.

“A foreign company claims to have conducted an investigation that led them to the conclusion that I am running the account, but they have never engaged with me on their findings,” he previously said.

Matumba confirmed that one of the links shared by the Tracy Zille account does lead to his website, but said as a website owner he does not have control over who shares his posts or links. Matumba said he had been generating traffic to his sites using Google Ads prior to the account being created, and thus had no reason to create a fake account.

Tell the world that Tracy Zille is back as @MadamZille

I am here to stay.

— Tracy Zille (@MadamZille) March 30, 2021

Jean le Roux, who conducted the investigation on behalf of DFRLab, at the time said it is by no means surprising that Matumba denied his involvement in the account, considering the personal and professional implications for him.

The DFRLab, however, stood by the investigation and its findings. “Since the DFRLab’s research is based on open-source information that is publicly available, we rarely request comment from parties implicated therein. In this case there was sufficiently compelling evidence, some of it unpublished, linking Matumba to the websites and the Twitter accounts amplifying them,” he explained at the time.

Le Roux said when conducting disinformation research, identifying who benefits from the activity is the strongest indicator of who is running the account. In this case, the @TracyZille account was part of a network that only shared links to websites Matumba would make money off.

“This was not a once-off thing either; of the 102 tweets the DFRLab investigation considered, 61 contained links to one of three websites that belong to Matumba. In addition, the @TracyZille account in some instances shared links to articles published by Matumba mere minutes earlier, while in other cases it shared links from Matumba’s website that was more than a month old. This is abnormal behaviour intended to drive traffic to the site, and the traffic generated in this way stands to benefit only one individual: Matumba, the owner of the website,” Le Roux added.

He said the purpose of the investigation was to identify the person orchestrating a race-baiting Twitter account that was using its controversial statements to make money. In this case, the purpose has been fulfilled and that “there was prima facie evidence that the account was orchestrated by Matumba, a fact made even more concerning when one considers the public office he holds”.

“The fact that the @TracyZille account has since stopped sharing links to Matumba’s websites since our publication is also noted,” he added.

Media Alert: SAHRC v “TRACY ZILLE” commences in the Louis Trichardt Equality Court, Limpopo https://t.co/AwifKKkXJy

— SAHRCommission (@SAHRCommission) July 27, 2021

The SAHRC further reported that Mathumba was generating an income from making these “disparaging and inflammatory” comments online through companies he owned and registered to which social media users were directed.

“The SAHRC investigated the complaint and proceeded to institute the matter at the Louis Trichardt Equality Court, where it has now been set down for hearing from July 27 to July 29. The SAHRC requests the court to declare comments made by Mathumba as harassment based on gender and race, and for the respondent to pay damages as a result of his impugned statements. The SAHRC’s investigation was supported by information received from the multinational social media platform Twitter, after extensive engagements, and will be supplemented by expert evidence which will be led during the hearing,” their statement added.

The commission said they are of the view that no individual may use the hurtful history of this country to leverage an income for themselves.

“The SAHRC condemns any form of action which deliberately contradicts our mandate of reconciliation and nation building, and is confident that the court will send a strong message to the faceless individuals on social media who attempts to abuse these platforms is stark contradiction of the aims of the Equality Act, 2000,” they concluded.